Electrical components or assets that form the high-voltage power distribution infrastructures throughout many countries is reaching an average age of 30 to 40 years old, and thus are nearing the end of the their expected operating life. As a result of the aging process, the reliability of the individual electrical components or assets is decreased, along with the availability of replacement parts needed to maintain such components in working order. However, in order to maximize their return on investment, the operators of the power-distribution infrastructure have sought to reduce the operating life cycle costs of the electrical assets by maximizing their operating capacity through increased power output and optimized maintenance budgets.
To achieve such operating goals, a substantial portion of the power distribution industry has implemented, or is in the process of adopting, next generation maintenance systems, such as condition-based maintenance systems or reliability-based maintenance systems. Such maintenance systems are configured to allow operators to strategically determine which maintenance actions to take and what investments to make in the electrical components or assets of the power distribution infrastructure based on the condition of each individual component or asset.
Additionally, over the last decade a significant number of diagnostic methods and on-line monitoring sensors/systems have been developed to assist operators of high-voltage power distribution infrastructures make informed decisions in determining what maintenance actions to take. Such diagnostic methods are typically used for off-line tests to carry out precise operating parameter assessments, while on-line monitoring systems are used to continuously monitor various operating parameters associated with the power distribution components in order to detect breaks or changes in operating trends and to trigger alarms based on the status of the monitored operating parameters.
Unfortunately, one of the difficulties for operators is that an operational outage of the electrical assets or components is required in order to conduct an off-line analysis of the operating performance of such electrical assets. Although off-line analysis methods provide accurate information, such methods are expensive to carry out and generally yield updated data periodically, such as every several months to a year or more, for example. Thus, any operating changes that take place at the power distribution assets or components are not identified by the off-line analysis system until the off-line analysis is performed. Thus, any changes that occur after an off-line analysis has taken place will not be identified until a subsequent off-line analysis is performed.
On-line monitoring sensors/systems provide continuous data relating to one specific operating performance parameter associated with the operation of each of the various electrical components or assets of the power distribution system. However, on-line sensors/systems provide data associated with only a few operating parameters and that data is less accurate than data provided by the off-line diagnostic methods. For example, on-line monitoring sensor/systems may be used to monitor the temperature of the cooling oil found in an electrical transformer tank, the bushing power factor, and on-load tap changer motor torque associated with the transformer's operation. However, because on-line monitoring sensors/systems provide limited and narrowly focused data, they are unable to provide a complete global assessment of the condition of the entire power distribution network, including the power distribution network's ability to sustain current operating conditions and the network's potential for attaining an overload condition.
Furthermore, operators of power distribution networks are generally overwhelmed with massive amounts of operating data that is difficult to interpret and manage because such data is not compiled as actionable information that can be readily interpreted by the various operational/organizational levels of the power distribution utility. Moreover, because such data is acquired from electrical components or assets of various makes and models, it is a substantial challenge to aggregate and process such data to identify relevant information which can be communicated in an appropriate format to the various members (operators) of the operational or organizational hierarchy (executive, management, maintenance) of the power distribution utility who are responsible for the operation, maintenance, and asset management of the power distribution network, which may be based in different geographical locations.
Therefore, there is a need for a dynamic assessment system for high-voltage electrical components that is configured to correlate data periodically acquired from off-line condition assessment surveys (diagnosis) with data continuously acquired from each on-line sensor to provide intelligent data outputs regarding the condition of an asset or group of assets, as well as to provide actionable information or recommended responses to the necessary operational levels of the power distribution utility so that informed decisions regarding operation and maintenance can be made. Furthermore, there is a need for a dynamic assessment system for high-voltage electrical components that provides information that will be accessible remotely by any member of the operational hierarchy of the power distribution network or utility at any time. Additionally, there is a need for a dynamic assessment system for high-voltage electrical components that dynamically and continuously updates one or more operating assessment factors, including risk of failure, overload capability, aging factor, cumulated aging time, and other operating parameters associated with a plurality (fleet) of high-voltage electrical components that are part of a power distribution network. In addition, there is a need for an assessment system for a dynamic assessment system for high-voltage components that provide a central data repository to store data that includes or that creates links to different databases having lifetime/legacy data obtained from any source (e.g. off-line records, such as diagnosis, maintenance and operation history, as well as on-line data captured by on-line sources of various manufacturers and models) related to each electrical component being monitored. Still yet, there is a need for a dynamic assessment system that provides an expert system that correlates on-line data, off-line data, and operational data of one or more electrical components with actionable information to provide a recommended response based on the current operating state of the electrical components.